Guest blog: Stress-less Mondays

Paula Derrow is SELF's articles director.

Is there anyone who enjoys waking up on a Monday morning to go to work, particularly after a Sunday night spent having just a little bit too much fun? I sure don't. Yet, like most people, I have to do it.

I have to get up to an alarm (I’m not a morning person), and haul my butt onto the subway to get to my office at SELF. Now, I love my job, don’t get me wrong. But the beginning of the week is hard for me, especially if I’m getting back from a vacation. (Once I get into the swing of things, I’m fine.)

So, I was wondering, what, if anything, I could learn from happiness research about making Mondays easier. Specifically, were there certain techniques that would help me seize the day (or at least, not dread the day) and slide into my office chair with a smile on my face? So I decided to take a little quiz developed by one of my favorite happiness researchers, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside, and author of the very cool book, The How of Happiness. The quiz is designed to help you discover which happiness practices come easiest to you, so you can incorporate them into your day-to-day, and feel happier (even on Monday mornings!). By happiness practices, I mean little acts you can do to shift your thinking from gloomy to content, including writing down three things you feel grateful about, stopping to savor something beautiful in your environment or doing a loving-kindness meditation (it sounds woo-woo, but basically, you sit, breathe and relax and think nice thoughts like “Peace to the world.”

Anyway, I took Lyubormirsky’s quiz to find out what happiness practice would best suit my personality, and I learned I should do random acts of kindness to perk me up throughout the day. They can be anonymous (like leaving a plate of cookies on the giveaway table at work) or visible (helping an elderly person across the street), but the research shows that by fitting more of these acts into my day, I’ll feel happier. I’m going to try it right away. Get ready, world. Things are about to get kinder. Especially on Mondays.